This first tentative probe was like a poorly executed dress rehearsal. Roughly two companies of Soviet troops, devoid of tank support, spread their skirmish lines wide and charged while shouting slogans.
"Hold steady! Let them get close!"
Simo Häyhä crouched behind his cover, not even raising his rifle. He watched with cold detachment as the soldiers rushed to their deaths. It was only when they entered effective range that the Maxim machine guns began to roar like tearing silk. The battle devolved into a one-sided slaughter. After leaving dozens of bodies behind, the Soviets retreated as quickly as they had come.
"That's it?" Juha spat, wiping his overheating barrel. "I thought they were actually going to put up a fight."
"Don't be a fool."
Walter Ilves sat at the bottom of the trench, thumbing fresh rounds into his magazine. His expression hadn't softened despite the easy repulse; instead, he looked more somber.
"That was just a reconnaissance in force," Walter said, pointing toward the distance. "There were definitely observers mixed in with that wave. Our machine gun nests, mortar pits, even the command post, they've probably all been marked on their artillery coordinates by now."
As if on cue, a suffocating shriek tore through the sky the moment Walter finished speaking.
"Incoming! Take cover!!!"
This time, it wasn't sporadic harassment. It was a true carpet bombardment.
Boom! Boom! Boom!
The earth shuddered. Accumulations of snow were vaporized instantly by the heat. Countless heavy shells rained down upon Suvanto Heights like a deluge. Several machine gun bunkers that had been spitting fire moments ago were leveled instantly; logs and human remains were tossed into the air along with chunks of frozen soil.
The bombardment lasted ten full minutes.
When the last shell fell, Walter shook the dirt from his uniform and peered out. He saw a sight he would never forget. If the previous attack had been a tide, this was a true tsunami.
Through the drifting soot and smoke, a dozen T-28 medium tanks formed a wall of steel. These were monsters, larger and far more lethal than the T-26s. Behind them, and flanking them on both sides, was a sea of Soviet infantry. A dense, black mass of heads moved forward, looking as if the entire forest had been emptied.
"My God..."
Antti pushed up his dust-covered glasses, his voice trembling. "That's... that's at least a regiment... no, two! There must be three or four thousand men!"
"Stop counting!"
Simo roared. Blood was trickling from his ears from the concussive force of the shells, but he was the first back at his firing position. "Everyone to combat stations! This is the general assault! It's the real thing!"
Three or four thousand fully armed Soviet troops, supported by a dozen tanks and armored cars, were grinding toward the heights held by only a few hundred exhausted survivors. It was no longer a battle; it was an impending consumption.
"Come on, then."
Walter's jaw tightened. His crosshairs locked onto a Soviet commander walking beside a tank. "Let's see which is harder, your luck or my lead."
Bang!
At the first crack of the rifle, the chest of the commander Walter had targeted erupted in a spray of blood. The man was knocked backward as if struck by an invisible sledgehammer.
But this did not trigger chaos as it had before. On the contrary, the shot was like poking a hornet's nest.
"Ura—!!!"
The roar from thousands of throats rose simultaneously, a literal wall of sound that drowned out the din of gunfire. The Soviet lines did not falter or even slow down. The machine gun turrets on the tanks and armored cars began to spray wildly, while the infantry, as if answering a divine call, accelerated their charge instead of seeking cover.
"Dammit! They've lost their minds!"
Walter cursed under his breath, frantically cycling the bolt. He knew that the gates of hell had only now fully swung open.
The tank cannons and vehicle-mounted guns wove a seamless web of fire, leveling every inch of snow on the Finnish positions like a bulldozer. Walter felt that for every time he pulled the trigger, he faced a return volley from at least ten different rifles.
Bang!
A Soviet second lieutenant attempting to direct the infantry's advance had his head shattered by Walter.
Bang!
Next, a political worker waving a red flag collapsed into the bloody slush.
But after picking off these obvious command figures, Walter realized he didn't even have time to hunt for the next "high-value target." His entire field of vision was filled with people—dense, overlapping, and overwhelming.
The Soviet soldiers were like a colony of ants. When the front row fell, the rear row simply stepped over the corpses and kept charging. When the left was broken, the right surged forward to fill the gap.
"Die! Just die!"
Walter stopped looking for officers. His brain ceased all complex thought, leaving only the most primal instinct for slaughter. Whenever a khaki-colored figure appeared in the notch of his iron sights, his finger pulled back automatically.
Bang. Bang. Bang.
Every kick of recoil signaled the end of a life. His barrel was glowing hot, even burning his fingers, but he felt nothing.
Beside him, Simo was firing with staggering speed; the vintage Mosin-Nagant in his hands operated like a precision semi-automatic. Juha had gone berserk, tossing aside an empty machine gun drum to grab a rifle and fire blindly.
The lone Maxim heavy machine gun manned by Matti and Toivo became the pillar of their section.
"Change the water! Faster!"
Matti screamed. The tongue of flame leaping from the old gun was a meter long. It acted like a giant scythe, carving bloody furrows through the dense Soviet ranks.
Yet all of this remained tragically insufficient against the approaching steel beasts.
A T-28 tank rumbled over the barbed wire at the edge of the heights. Its 76mm main gun swung around violently, leveling itself at Matti's machine gun nest.
Boom!
A deafening explosion followed. The roar of the machine gun cut out instantly. Sandbags, machine gun parts, and the broken bodies of the two brothers were hurled into the air.
"Matti! Toivo!"
Juha let out a howl of despair and tried to charge out, but Simo pinned him down with a death grip.
"Don't go to your death! Kill that tank!"
Simo pulled a glass bottle from his pack, a Molotov Cocktail, the Finnish specialty filled with a mixture of gasoline, kerosene, and tar, with an alcohol-soaked rag stuffed in the neck.
"But it's too far! You can't throw that thing thirty meters!" Antti cried out, his voice cracking.
The tank was still sixty meters away, separated from them by a wall of Soviet infantry.
"Then wait for it to get closer!"
Walter shouted, grabbing two Molotovs and lighting the fuses. "Cover me!"
Just then, the T-28 that had destroyed the machine gun nest seemed to grow overconfident in its victory. It didn't wait for its infantry support and instead throttled up, intending to crush this final line of defense directly.
"Now!"
The moment the tank's treads began to grind the lip of the trench, Walter lunged upward, exposing half his body. He didn't throw the bottle at the thick frontal armor; he aimed for the slatted engine cooling vents at the rear.
The Molotov traced a fiery arc through the air.
Smash!
The glass shattered perfectly against the vents. The viscous incendiary fluid leaked into the engine compartment. Barely two seconds later, a heart-stopping roar vibrated from within the tank. A geyser of black and red flame erupted from the engine deck like a volcano as the heat ignited the fuel tanks.
"Aaaaaagh!"
Blood-curdling screams echoed from inside the steel hull. The burning T-28 spun in place like a headless fly before a final explosion turned it into a pile of blazing scrap metal.
"Beautiful hit!"
A few cheers erupted in the trench. Inspired, other Finnish soldiers followed suit. For a moment, dozens of Molotovs flew toward the lead Soviet armored group. Though most missed vital spots, the raging fires created massive confusion. Several armored cars were turned into torches, and two T-26s backed up in a panic to avoid the flames, crushing their own infantry in the process.
This brief moment of chaos gave Walter and his squad one final, fleeting breath of air.
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